11 March 2015

We lived in North Loup, Nebraska, when I was in tenth and eleventh grade. My dad was pastor of the Seventh-day Baptist Church and we lived in the parsonage where my mother had lived as a child when her father was pastor of the same church. My brother had connected me with Joni Goodrich Kuzma who is several years younger than I am. I called her from main street, in front of the cafe.

Joni lives in Kearney now, about 70 miles away, but her brother Jim lives in North Loup. She called him and he came to main street to find me and we had a nice chat. He called the current pastor, Scott Hausrath, who said he would be happy if I came over to the parsonage to see the house. Off I went. Pastor Scott is a fine man and we had a good talk about the house and other things.

The house was familiar and Pastor Scott really enjoyed talking to someone who knew the house's history, first hand.

We lived there before I became a collector of shermaniana but the next street to the West is Sherman Street and there's a Sherman Reservoir in a neighboring county, yep, Sherman County. There was still a bit of ice on the reservoir even though this week has been up to the low 60s. The courthouse in Loup City, the Sherman County seat, is fairly plain but that's not a problem.

After being in North Loup and finding Sherman Reservoir, hidden in the unassuming and beautiful hills of central Nebraska, I headed toward Kearney to visit Joni. We had a fine chat about old times, where and what we were now, and life and even a bit of politics. And then it was off to western Nebraska with their advice that U.S. 30 (Lincoln Highway, again) would be a good choice since I'd be looking for overnight accommodations and the bluer highways might have few choices. U.S. 30 goes on the North side of the North Platte River and Interstate 80 goes on the South side. I think my choice of speed is about 70 miles per hour. The speed limit on U.S. 30 was 65 and it gave me a chance to go about as fast as I would on the interstate but with more things to see as I progressed.

I spent the night in Ogallala (it's fun to say) which is about 20 miles from the Colorado border. There are more pictures of North Loup and the Nebraska landscape in my Flickr photostream.